Two years ago, we brought our readers news about the Joule Hive thermal battery from Electrified Thermal Solutions. The company is an MIT spin-off that began researching the benefits of electrified firebrick more than 12 years ago. Here’s why that is important. About 20 percent of all energy consumed globally … [continued]
Industrial cement graphic showing calcium-silicate rock entering a complex processing plant and ordinary cement leaving as the main product.
Brimstone’s cement story is interesting because it is not only a cement story. The company’s public positioning is now much bigger than ordinary Portland cement without limestone process CO₂. Brimstone is presenting itself as a Rock Refinery: a process that starts with calcium-bearing silicate rock and co-produces multiple industrial materials … [continued]
Cement decarbonization is a layered pathway: less Portland, lower clinker, better design, substitutes, recycling and selective CCS.
Cement decarbonization attracts miracle stories. One company has a new binder. Another has a carbon-negative aggregate. Someone else has an electrochemical process, a hydrogen kiln, a low-carbon limestone route, a supplementary cementitious material, a recycled cement process or a carbon-capture retrofit. Some of these ideas are useful. Some will become … [continued]
Whitehouse, DelBene’s bill puts fee on products that exceed U.S. average carbon intensity WASHINGTON, DC — Today, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Representative Suzan DelBene (D-WA) introduced the Clean Competition Act of 2025. The bill would boost clean, American manufacturing and cut industrial pollution in the United States and abroad. The … [continued]
ChatGPT generated panoramic infographic showing how most CCS concepts fail the purity, proximity, and economics filter, leaving only a few viable industrial niches
Carbon capture and storage has been marketed as a general solution to climate change. The record shows it is not. Where it does make sense is where chemistry gives you a high-volume, concentrated stream of CO2, where geography puts that stream on top of storage or at a pier with … [continued]
The publication of the white paper Beyond Portland: Cement’s Transition to 2100 by TFIE Strategy Inc comes at a moment when the cement and concrete industries stand at the center of the global climate challenge. Cement is everywhere—in the foundations of homes, the bridges that span rivers, the ports that … [continued]
NREL’s annual cement and concrete meeting is the only venue that exists for experts to share direct feedback to DOE. Photo by Agata Bogucka, NREL.
NREL Brings Together Specialists From Across the Country To Discuss Cement and Concrete for Its Third Annual Critical Technologies Meeting Cement and concrete are essential to United States infrastructure, from our roadways to the buildings we occupy. Accounting for 50% of all materials produced globally, domestic production of this critical material is … [continued]
ChatGPT generated panoramic construction site comparison showing a rebar-filled concrete high-rise on the left and a modular timber mid-rise under rapid assembly on the right
Cross laminated timber is often presented as a housing solution, a way to build faster and more affordably while reducing the carbon locked into buildings. That is true, but it is also part of a larger story about the heavy materials industries. Every time a cubic meter of cross laminated … [continued]
ChatGPT generated this high-resolution image of stacked steel beams and rebar at a construction site, illustrating steel’s foundational role in traditional building
My recent online conversation with Scott Norris, a structural steel expert and Director of Engineering Solutions at Steelcon, prompted me to reexamine some assumptions I had previously made about global steel demand projections. Scott, whose practical experience within the steel industry grants him clear insights into current operational constraints and … [continued]
ChatGPT generated panoramic image of an abandoned rural industrial facility with a protest banner reading “Jobs Promised, Jobs Cancelled,” symbolizing the economic fallout of canceled clean energy projects in red-state counties
Once again, the Trump administration has swung its ideological axe at clean energy initiatives, cutting $3.7 billion in funding previously earmarked by the Department of Energy (DOE) for carbon capture and storage (CCS), hydrogen fuels, synthetic fuels, and a variety of other industrial decarbonization technologies. Predictably, the knee-jerk cancellations were … [continued]
